Fly Me To The Moon (Let Me Grieve Among The Stars)
by Nitrobot
Summary: Of all the beings she'd killed over the centuries, he was the only one stubborn enough to try haunting her. Or maybe she was finally going crazy. [post-canon TFP, Ghost!Breakdown/Airachnid]


It started subtly at first: a faded smear of blue out of the corner of her HUD, a speck of orange glinting in her Insecticons' optics as they genuflected and grinded their knees into millennia of moon dust. She thought the damn stuff was clouding up her processor, but the phantoms only became more frequent the more she tried to ignore them.

Even in death, Breakdown managed to constantly scratch at her nerve nodes.

"I thought I killed you twice already," she said to the dead air as her talons carved stardust out of her clogged armour seams.

The air shrugged over her. "Well, usually third time's the lucky one. Nice to see you too, by the way." Other than the underline of an echo of a voice bouncing across dimensions to reach her, Breakdown sounded like he'd just woken up from a very long recharge, and looked just as carelessly scruffy with that damn smile that wouldn't go away. Every dent and scuff of his armour that she could recall was there, coupled with the gentle creak of his cables flexing with each minute movement. The only thing out of place was the long-lost second optic blinking back at her, no patch to be seen. There was no telltale flicker to expose him as a hologram, some half-processed prank by a suicidal Vehicon. For all intents and purposes, he was standing right there in her little corner of hell.

Airachnid wondered if she'd be considered a waking dream or nightmare by him.

"Come to try and smash me into scrap some more?" she asked, sighing as much to blow the grime off her claws as to express exhaustion. She didn't do enough nowadays to warrant much excuse for fatigue.

"Ain't gonna ask _how_ I'm here?" Breakdown asked, and he seemed just a little bit offended at the lack of interest in a miracle of necromancy taking place right in front of her. But the feeling of curiosity left her before mercy did, a long time ago.

"No. Answer my question." She caught another glimpse of orange creeping into her HUD as Breakdown craned his helm down, insistent on getting her attention even as she focused on armour maintenance.

"Surprisingly, there's not a lotta Decepticons in the Allspark," he said, and she heard his wheels scuff as he shrugged. "Easy to get lonely."

"Then go bother someone else," she helpfully suggested. At least it made him straighten up again.

"...I don't think anyone else can see me." His voice was a mumble that made it obvious he was biting his bottom lip again. Knockout always told everyone off for habits like chewing digits or venting loudly, but without a daily lecture from the doctor they kicked right back in. Even she was guilty of it, periodically testing the edge of her fangs on her lips a little too roughly and biting into her own bitter energon. Just as well she hated the taste, else she would have likely drained herself by now.

"How tragic," Airachnid said.

A clank of metal as peds scuffed together listlessly. "I'd rather be with you, anyway."

She changed her mind. _That_ was tragic.

"Why, so you can take another few swings at me?" She scoffed, wiping the last of the cosmic mold from her digits as she folded her servos over. Her auxiliary legs took over the job of supporting her, lifting her level with her resident phantom as guilt flooded that pretty new optic of his.

"Alright, alright, I... I got a bit angry, and I'm sorry." He waved his confession forth with limp wrists articulating what he just wasn't smart enough to give words to. "I've got a temper. I... I don't like being made fun of, okay? And Dreadwing was gonna kill you anyway... orders from Megatron and everything..."

Airachnid didn't try stopping herself from smirking, barely holding a fang back from sinking into her bottom lip. An eyeridge raised as one of her legs jerked. "Trust me, Breakdown, you'd _know_ if I was making fun of you."

The hand that the mech pressed to his forehelm and shielding his optics dropped. Just about everything about him dropped, actually, his faceplate in particular. Only his vocaliser seemed to be rising, trying to leap on the tide of his stuttering glossa. "Wait, so... y-you were... a-actually _flirting_ with me then?"

She almost broke down into a smile before her spark was whipped with the usual wash of poison pain. Dark Energon always had a price for the privilege of crusting your fuel lines over. Still, she supposed it was her time to admit now. "I guess I was."

She managed to catch at least two levels of relief before he angled his helm away from her. "Well now I feel _really_ bad 'bout tryin' to kill you."

Of all the things left in her dusty universe, that made her laugh. It felt good to shift the debris from her vents in some almighty huffs. "You've got until the end of time to get used to the guilt. If it helps, it only took _me_ a century."

Breakdown brought himself back out of his own servo-joint, instead studying an island of rust sprayed over with frayed cobweb on the front face of her ramshackle shelter. It meant he only had to look at her from the corner of his old optic while he blinked the new one, sliding shutter over spotless glass. He must've still been getting used to it. "I guess it's easier when your whole career is murder..." He trailed off as his glossa refused to move much more. It seemed to know that that was a thought only thrown out loud by mechs who were long since dead.

Instead, Airachnid lashed out with her own glossa rather than talons- after all, she had just cleaned them. "Isn't a career in murder the whole point of the Decepticons?"

Either his processor had reached a physical limit, or he just wasn't going to try pushing it any further. In either case, Airachnid could only guess the reason behind Breakdown's hefty shrug. "I guess I'm not smart enough to know that. I just do what I'm told."

In usual circumstances she would have started a whole mine of mockeries about his processing power by now, but it just didn't feel right. Not when they both would have known she didn't mean any of it. Rather than say something wrong, she said nothing at all and restarted her cleaning routine.

In the face of her silence and return to meticulous maintenance, Breakdown fiddled with the chunks of his digits as his peds wandered. "Y'know, the whole 'legion of loyal zombies' thing I get, but big ol' empty dust bowl to yourself... doesn't seem like your kind of scene."

Airachnid almost bit her glossa from another fleeting smile. "Well, obviously Soundwave doesn't know me as well as you do."

"Least he gave you a lotta company," Breakdown noted, and he must have been peeking his helm through the loose door panel that opened onto legions of resting Insecticons and Vehicons. A giant pile of deadly lethargy was what they were, and she had nothing to do with them except drink and drain dry.

Airachnid had another sardonic in mind for when her focus could allow speaking, but Breakdown was already onto something else. "What did you mean... when you said you killed me twice?"

Now awkward implications started to prickle in her processor. If he didn't know about his body becoming a human joyride suit... hopefully his tantrum wouldn't transfer to the land of the barely living. She'd hate to have to build from wreckage all over again.

With that in mind, she wasn't in the mood for skirting around the point like it was a primed minefield. "Well, it's to do with Silas taking a lot more than an optic this time..." She rubbed her claws together to grind the grime into something too tiny for her to bother with. "In simple terms, he stole your body and used you like a puppet on wires. I didn't like that. That's my job."

Recognition slowly dripped into the orange blankness staring at her. "Ah. That."

Airachnid's attempt at caution was made null by a hit of intrigue. Like the curiosity she missed, but much more useful. "You knew? When Silas took your body?" she asked.

"Well, I felt my base programming go back online, but my spark didn't go anywhere," he answered, pacing as much as he could manage in the squat cube of her hideout. "Everything was just a background buzz for a while, but then there was this really sharp..." He did the rolling motions with his hands again. "Not _pain_ , but like all my nerves were sparking. Except I didn't _have_ any nerves."

Airachnid made a fair guess to the source. "That would have been Knockout using your frame as a guinea pig for his little science projects- with Silas still inside." She'd gotten the info from her Vehicons as they told her all that she'd missed onboard the Nemesis, now a pitiful floating husk trapped in Earth's atmosphere. Even Megatron couldn't work well without a steady supply of his cannon-fodder drones, nothing but a commander without an army.

Whether he savoured the thought of Silas suffering much more than him or not, Breakdown only expressed disbelief. "All those times he said he'd _recycle_ me if I died, and he actually did?! That son of a-!"

"Focus, Breakdown." Only her voice stopped him plunging a phantom fist into one of the corner supports. Even a wisp of spectral wind would have sent it skiffing across the dust and had the roof collapse in on them. "What after that?"

"Then... then were was a lot of anger. And hunger." He'd lowered his fist, but refused to unfuse his digits. "You don't really need fuel when you're dead, but... I recognised the urge. Then there _was_ pain." His digits finally released and gestured lightly to her. "Thanks to you, I'd guess."

Airachnid channeled faux offence through a quirked eyeridge. "Would you rather I'd have left him to wear you like a costume and massacre the entire ship?"

Pristine denta showed themselves as Breakdown grinned. They might have dazzled her if not for the gloom. "Point taken." His fist-favoured digits flexed again, faint wires clumping together, and he trudged back over to the door. Outside was a monolith to her survival. "I was like one of those things out there?" he asked. She imagined him watching the cyan drool from their hooked mouths, the ragged snarls of their decaying internals as they cycled a stale vacuum of futility through their vents. She actually felt bad that she had to say yes.

He kept one hand on the frame of the panel, turning his neck so she could see the apologetic smile. "Hope I didn't scare you."

Airachnid kept her servos clamped crossed over her chestplates as her spark throbbed. The poison had mostly numbed it by now, but something was kicking it up against her throat. "As far as I'm concerned, that wasn't you," she said, as her back legs shuffled to close the space between them both. "You're more than just your body. Where our species is concerned, at least."

It occurred to her that he was the type of mech who could plaster a smile on and forget it was even there, and his lips barely shifted as he whispered, "Why'd I have to fall for the one so much brighter than me?"

Airachnid almost asked herself why she told herself she _hadn't_ fallen for him. What was left of her pride was going to get a good kicking for that. His lips were still moving as her processor tore itself apart and her spark fried within her, but luckily she couldn't take her optics off them.

"I'd... still like to take you on a date. When you, uh... go to the Allspark, that is."

The last of her air pushed through in an ironic scoff. "Do you really think Primus would let me anywhere near his little choir of dead sparks?"

Rather than join in with her degradation, Breakdown just blinked. He seemed fond of doing that now. "You're closer to it than you think," he said.

Any acid left stirring inside her evaporated into a nameless sludge. Even her fangs seemed to stick to her mouth, or maybe it was something else making it a struggle for her to speak. "You'd put in a good word for me?" she had to choke out as her optics started to sting. She might have clawed them out to stop it, but Breakdown's digit reached the source of the pain first.

"Of course," he said as the thick tip grazed her faceplate, going right through her in a blast of cold that made her realise that her plate was wet before he touched it. It was stiff with something frozen now, and her optics had icicles of coolant trailing from them. She didn't even realise she was crying soon enough to be angry about it.

Breakdown was still looking at her, waiting for an answer.

"Well, if I get in..." she conditioned, keeping her servos bolted to her side and convincing herself that the trembles were just from the cold. "I guess we have a date."

Breakdown nodded, and the tilt of his helm seemed to make his mouth and the smile within bloom wider. "I can't say I'll look forward to it... but at least you won't be lost when it happens." For once, both optics looked as bright as each other, but everything else seemed to be fading. Blue gave way to something like Earth's sky and his face become burnt amber. She realised she was losing him again when he held back from touching her again.

"One more thing... Airachnid?"

It was the first time in so long anyone had said her name. She almost didn't recognise it, or how good it felt to hear it with his voice. "...Yes?" she whispered to a slipping memory.

"I'm sorry I wasn't good enough for you alive."

He was gone before she could tell him it wasn't his fault. All that was left was two stars off in the black distance, hanging above her slumbering hoard.

 **xx**

 _I made myself really sad writing this so I hope you like it or I'll be even more sad._


End file.
